Celebrating Activism | Prison Books | Brendan Behan

Celebrating with Alex and FraRepublicans don’t say thank you often enough to each other. Fra McCann and Alex Maskey are 50 year activists. That is they have both been involved in the struggle for over 50 years. The two of them stepped down from the Assembly two years ago. Fra was replaced by Aisling Reilly and Alex by Danny Baker. Alex still remains the Ceann Comhairle – Speaker of the Assembly – until such times as the DUP agree to elect a new Speaker.Last Friday evening several hundred family, friends and comrades of both men came together to celebrate their lives of activism. They were also interviewed by Joe Austin about their experience of community activism, struggle, imprisonment and elected politics. Prison Book Ban liftedLast week I wrote a piece about books and the prison system here. That literary ramble through our penal institutions was triggered by news that some books by republicans are banned from the prisons here. Pat Sheehan MLA, a former prisoner and hungerstriker, wrote to the prison authorities. He said: “Twenty-five years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement I find it incomprehensible that republican literature should still be censored in this way. I thought those days were long behind us. The Irish republican analysis of our history is as valid as any other, and attempts to censor that analysis only serve to indulge the view that the prison service is politically partisan.” Brendan BehanLast week, 9 February, marked the centenary of the birth of Brendan Behan. Behan was a hugely influential writer whose books were rooted in his working class experience and republicanism. His parents, Stephen Behan and Kathleen Kearney, were republicans. His mother’s brother - Peadar Ó Cearnaigh – was a veteran of the 1916 Rising and wrote The Soldier’s Song (Amhrán na bhFiann).At the age of eight Brendan joined the Fianna. Later he joined the IRA. In December 1939 he was dispatched to Liverpool to identify possible targets for the then bombing campaign. In his eagerness he brought with him explosives he had personally prepared. He was arrested. Because he was aged 16 Behan was sentenced to three years in a juvenile centre. Almost 20 years later that story was told in Borstal Boy. The book was banned in the South.